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The last three decades have witnessed significant changes in the social and economic context of young people's lives. There is increasing evidence that for young people growing up in the UK, this is fuelling a disparity between those with resources and those without. What this means in terms of social justice, however, is difficult to discern. In Scotland, promoting greater social justice so that all its citizens are included has been held up as a key vision of successive Scottish administrations since devolution began in 1999. Scotland therefore makes an interesting case for the examination of policy discourses in relation to young people. In order to do this, the paper draws on a theoretical framework of justice developed by Nancy Fraser which is oriented on the norm of "participatory parity". Combining this framework with an approach informed by critical discourse analysis, the current policy context in Scotland is examined in order to discern if it contributes to all young people achieving participatory parity and subsequently social justice.

While it is generally acknowledged that being "historically informed" lies at the heart of critical accounts of education policy-making, the use of historically focused retrospective research methods within the field is rare. This paper makes the case for retrospective research at a time when some of the most significant episodes of post-war educational policy-making are fast passing into the realms of not-so-recent history. In particular, it is argued that current policy scholars now have an opportunity to revisit the issues and concerns regarding the formation of the "New Right" education policy reforms 30?years ago. Drawing on the experiences of a recently completed study of educational policy-making during the 1979-1983 Thatcher administration, it is argued that retrospective methods offer a surprisingly rich opportunity to collect primary data from the policy elites of the 1980s. It is concluded that the time is right for the production of a useful addendum to the founding studies of educational policy sociology that were conducted at the time.

This article argues that the concept of rationality is undergoing significant revision in UK education policy-making, influenced by developments in several academic fields. This article focuses on the take up of behavioural economics in policy as one aspect of this revision of the concept of rationality, discussing how this has happened and its implications. Framed by a wider debate regarding the significance of a "crisis" in neoliberal approaches to social change, behavioural economics suggests that a reliance on rational choice is insufficient and individuals need to be "nudged" to make good choices. This revision and its impact on the subject of policy, the policy-maker and policy technologies are examined, and the discussion is supported by two illustrations from school choice and youth service policy texts from the 2000s. The potential use of "nudge" theory in education is also considered with respect to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government's use of behavioural economics. In conclusion, we argue that the use of these ideas in policy, alongside others, marks a revision of the neoliberal idea of a rational chooser as the aim of policy-making, of which education policy sociology should take account. (Contains 6 notes.)

In this paper, I consider the problem of truth telling through the notion of parrhesia as developed and explicated in Foucault's last lectures at the College de France (1982-1983 and 1983-1984) and the figure of the pariah that runs throughout Arendt's work. In tracing connections and tensions in the way the two thinkers explore questions and dilemmas around the courage to tell the truth in philosophy and politics, I look into the current climate within the UK academia, where there is a lot of ambivalence about whether people mean what they say or say what they mean anymore. In a Foucauldian mode of inquiry, I raise the question: what is the role of the academic when going through "dark times", vis-a-vis questions of truth telling; what are the conditions of possibility for truth telling itself to be recognised as a question or a problem and how can we start mapping the effects of what we as academics do or refrain from doing? (Contains 27 notes.)

The Coalition came to power in 2010 with a radical, controversial vision for education and set about transforming the UK landscape. The Secretary of State described how, in future, autonomous schools and colleges would compete with one another to raise standards, high performers would expand and others improve or disappear. His aim is for children and their parents to have greater choice over their education, academic rigour to be prized above all else and as a result intelligent children from poorer backgrounds will have the same chance to succeed as their more affluent peers. Critics argue his vision will allow schools to wither on the vine, remove support from those who most need it and further disadvantage the already disadvantaged. In response, the Secretary of State has accused them of tolerating failure. The intensely polarised nature of the debate throws social justice and high standards into opposition; two principles that are not just complementary but interdependent. In this article, the author talks about what a socially just education would look like. She posits that a socially just education system would recognise that what happens outside the classroom matters as much as what happens in it. She stresses that a fair system relies on a strong and well resourced network of help and support for those children who need it. (Contains 7 notes.)

During its time in office, the UK's Labour government gave a strong message that having caring responsibilities for a young child should not be seen as a barrier to engaging in education and training. Its widening participation strategy included a specific commitment to increasing the number of mature students in higher education (HE)--students who are more likely than their younger peers to have caring responsibilities for dependent children. Furthermore, considerable resources were devoted to encouraging teenage mothers to return to education and training soon after the birth of their child. Nevertheless, despite this policy focus, there have been relatively few studies of the experiences of "student-parents" within HE. This paper draws on findings from a cross-national study (funded by the Nuffield Foundation) to explore the support currently offered by UK universities to students who have parental responsibilities for one or more children under the age of 16. It compares this support to that offered by Danish institutions, to assess whether differences in "welfare regime", the structure of the HE system and pervasive assumptions about gender relations have any discernible impact on the way in which student-parents are both constructed within institutional cultures and assisted by institutional practices. (Contains 2 notes and 2 tables.)

Collaborative inter-professional practice (IPP) is hailed increasingly by policy-makers and a growing number of practitioners as "the" new form of professional practice for those working within and across services for children and young people. Based on desk research, and drawing upon an increasingly invasive use of the term "collaborative" at macro as well as micro-levels of the state, this paper interrogates the discursive and organisational forms upon which this "new" advocacy rests and permeates the fields of Education, Health, Social Care, and Social Work, including standards agendas. Definitional complexity is compounded, it is argued, by relative paucity in evidence to demonstrate its benefit to and purposes for users/clients/students and professionals. Summarising evidence from case examples, conclusions draw attention to the need for more rigorous research not only about the benefits and disbenefits of inter-professional education (IPE) and collaborative IPP but also about the purported causal links between them. (Contains 1 note.)

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalition government has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain. While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a long revolution in education reform, centred around neoliberal market discourse. In the following paper, I examine the current government's education policy discourse and, by employing techniques of post-structuralist discourse analysis, reveal the government's attempts to rearticulate education around the logics of market, responsibilisation and self-esteem, which act to shift responsibility for social problems from the state to the individual. Furthermore, I shall argue that such rearticulation has been coupled with an ideological fantasy of "empowerment", which conceals the subordination of actors to these neoliberal logics by constituting the parent and, more recently, the teacher as powerful actors who have been freed from legal and bureaucratic constraints forced upon them by central government. (Contains 1 note.)

A focus of Government policy has been the need to ensure that those at the lower end of the labour market invest in their human capital through re-engaging with learning, which has been assumed to enable progress into better-paid employment. This article explores the problems created by "bad jobs" and the evidence for the existence of a set of mutually reinforcing factors that reduces the incentives acting on individuals in such work, and in many cases their employers, to participate and invest in education and training. Each of these factors, on their own, would be sufficient to cause problems at the lower end of the labour market. Acting in concert, as a mutually reinforcing matrix, they produce powerful reasons why many individuals perceive that the incentives to engage in work-related learning are weak. More broadly, our argument suggests that the fundamental causes of low pay and low-quality employment have been misdiagnosed and the subsequent public policy solution of up-skilling interventions is relatively ill-fitted to achieving the desired policy goals. Imaginative re-thinking on how policy might help those in low-wage, dead-end jobs is necessary. (Contains 3 notes.)

There is a growing body of literature discussing evidence-based education, practice, policy, and decision-making from a critical perspective. In this article, drawing on the literature and policy documents related to evidence-based education in the USA, Britain, and Canada, I join this critique and offer an anticolonial perspective. I argue that proponents of evidence-based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American-European colonial era. I posit that this colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonized labor. I conclude with the decolonizing implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform. (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper documents how health is storied into existence by "obesity discourse" to become part of the "natural attitude" towards the health of individuals or populations. We draw attention to some of the major policy documentation influencing thinking on "health" and school health education in the UK over recent years, especially, "every child matters" (ECM) and subsequent, related measures, for example the "National Healthy Schools Programme" (NHSP). We suggest that these measures have helped shape and make a "totally pedagogised society" and "totally pedagogised schools" in which "health", reduced to an issue of weight, exercise and diet, becomes everyone's concern, everywhere. The analyses highlight the socio-political and psychological leanings of such policy documentation and its potential effect on the identities of children and young people when institutionalised and "authorised" through state policies and the body pedagogies of schools and multiple other agencies. (Contains 1 note.)

The construction of crises is a key analytical and political issue. This paper examines what is at stake in the processes and practices of construction, responding to the arguments made in Andrew Gamble's "The spectres at the feast" (2009). We suggest that there are three areas of critical concern: first, that too little attention has been given to the ways in which political and popular accounts of crisis have been (and are being) articulated; second, that analyses of the present conjuncture need to be attentive to the question of how many crises are folded into the present; and third, that studying crisis demands a critical reflection on both the politics and economy that are combined in political economy.

Responding to the recent work of Andrew Gamble, the article discusses the extent to which the British situation can be described in terms of crisis. It suggests that an essential element of crisis is that of political and social contestation, and explores the terms on which contestation is taking shape in and around British education.

This paper examines the disclosure and reporting of expenditure under the UK government's "Building Schools for the Future" programme. The study finds that there is little detailed and useful financial reporting, and the public's right to know under Freedom of Information Act 2000 is very limited. The lack of such information makes it difficult to understand where public money is going, how it is being used and the extent of future commitments and liabilities, thereby preventing an informed public debate about the financing of public policy.

In 2008, the UK Labour government unveiled plans to abolish the Learning and Skills Council and transfer funding for the education and training of 16-19-year-olds in England to local authorities (LAs). The transfer of 16-19 funding complements the responsibilities that LAs have already acquired in relation to the raising of the education and training "participation age" and ensuring that all young people have access to a full 14-19 curriculum entitlement in their area. Such a move might be read as part of the "new localism" that has gained currency under the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, as well as an opportunity to rein back from an English education and training system that has become increasingly centralised and "top-down". Indeed, some commentators have argued for a new model of governance based on "devolved social partnership", with input from a wider range of stakeholders and the space for policy levers to be shaped more at local level. Drawing upon interviews with key personnel in LAs and other stakeholders, this paper examines the opportunities and challenges that LAs face in their new role, whether this amounts to a genuine devolution of power, and the prospects for "devolved social partnership". (Contains 13 notes.)

The paper questions the link that policy-makers assume exists between qualifications and access to employment in the creative and cultural (C&C) sector. It identifies how labour market conditions in the C&C sector undermine this assumption and how the UK's policy formation process inhibits education and training (E&T) actors from countering these labour market conditions. It demonstrates how non-government agencies ("intermediary organizations") are creating new spaces to assist aspiring entrants to develop the requisite forms of "vocational practice", "social capital" and "moebius strip" (i.e., entrepreneurial) expertise to enter and succeed in the sector. It concludes by identifying a number of: (a) new principles for the governance of E&T at the national level; (b) pedagogic strategies to facilitate "horizontal" transitions into and within the C&C sector; and (c) skill formation issues for all E&T stakeholders to address. (Contains 2 notes.)

The proliferation of policy think tanks and more broadly the rise of "policy networks" can be viewed as indicative of important global transformations in the nature of the state. That is, the emergence of new state modalities, with a shift away from government towards forms of polycentric governance, where policy is produced through multiple agencies and multiple sites of discourse generation. This paper addresses some particular aspects of this shift by focusing on a set of relationships and sites which have had some kind of influence upon the social and educational policies of UK New Labour governments. It has two main concerns. First, focusing on the generation and circulation of some of the key policy "ideas" of New Labour, it maps out a related and overlapping set of policy networks which join-up government, think tanks and some individual interlockers, who "straddle sectors and policy fields and settings". Second, it highlights some of the main discursive elements that flow through these networks, in particular those of innovation and enterprise. They give particular emphasis on the role of "social enterprise" and social entrepreneurs in the modernisation of public service provision and in providing solutions to intractable social problems. (Contains 4 boxes, 4 notes, and 3 figures.)

What constitutes graduate employability is discursively framed. In this paper we argue that whilst universities in the UK have long had an involvement in producing useful and productive citizens, the ongoing neoliberalisation of higher education has engendered a discursive shift in definitions of employability. Traditionally, universities regarded graduate employment as an aspect of institutions' relationship with the labour market, and one where they enjoyed a significant degree of discretion. Now, employability is a performative function of universities, shaped and directed by the state, which is seeking to supplant labour markets. We argue that this has three profound implications. First, state intervention in labour markets adjusts power balances in favour of employers. Second, contrary to the legitimising rationale of enhancing social justice, pursuit of employability agendas may well be creating two tiers of universities--those that produce docile employees and those that produce employers/leaders. And third, employability discourses may be adversely affecting pedagogies and curricula, to the disbenefit of students, institutions, employers, social justice and civil society. (Contains 2 notes.)

The UK Government is keen to encourage the use of mediation, rather than court or tribunal, as the best means of resolving disputes between citizen and state on the grounds that legal proceedings are costly, lengthy and stressful. The policy of proportionate dispute resolution appears to be particularly applicable to the field of special educational needs (SEN), where both mediation and tribunal are available as dispute resolution mechanisms. However, evidence suggests that very little use has been made of mediation in either England or Scotland. In order to understand this phenomenon, this paper begins with investigating the dominant policy frameworks in SEN (England) and additional support needs (ASN; Scotland). Subsequently, the attitudes of English and Scottish local authority (LA) officers are explored. It is argued that both countries now have an eclectic mix of policy frameworks in play, including the traditional models of bureaucracy and professionalism, and the more recent models of managerialism, consumerism and legality. In Scotland, professionalism and bureaucracy continue to dominate, and this is associated with more restricted access to and less use of all forms of dispute resolution, in particular the tribunal. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)

National policy discourses imply rational and positive pathways to greater equality and inclusion for public sector workers, including those in education. However, radical feminist and critical race theory suggests that whatever measures are undertaken to disassemble systems which impact negatively on those who are minority or excluded, systems which sustain current inequalities are likely to be synchronously constructed. Analysis of the UK performativity environment has variously identified a range of intended and unintended effects. The mechanisms by which performativity may impact on the inclusion or exclusion of diverse staff in leadership have not been widely explored empirically. This paper draws on data from five case studies of further education colleges. It interrogates the data to explore how the performativity culture relates to the multiple identities of leaders at various levels of hierarchy within the organisation. It concludes that while previous commentaries may have correctly discerned a relationship between managerialism and a centralisation of power to men and to senior leaders, they may have inadequately considered the complex impact of changes in public management culture on deeper power structures within organisations, including not only gender, but also socioeconomic class, ethnicity and disability amongst others.

This paper explores some particular aspects of the privatisation of public sector education, mapping and analysing the participation of education businesses in a whole range of public sector education services both in the UK and overseas. It addresses some of the types of privatisation(s) which are taking place "of", "in" and "through" education and education policy, "in" and "through" the work of education businesses. This entails a traversal of some of the multi-level and multi-layered fields of policy: institutional, national and international. Such an approach is important in demonstrating the increasing diversity and reach of some of the education businesses and their different kinds of involvements with different institutions and sectors of education. It also makes it possible to set local rhetorics, such as "partnership", within the context of corporate logics of expansion, diversification, integration and profit. (Contains 13 notes, 1 figure and 3 boxes.)

Headteacher workloads are often in the news. Long hours, punitive audit regimes and excessive amounts of paperwork take their toll on many, including John Illingworth, former National Union of Teachers (UK) President, and ex primary headteacher. In this paper, I investigate a UK BBC Radio 4 human interest interview conducted with Illingworth by the usually acerbic John Humphrys. Mobilising Bourdieu's notion of field, I examine the interview and argue that the analysis suggests that the media game of market share and the doxa of the fourth estate might work to delimit the capacity of such interviews to speak truth to policy power. (Contains 21 notes.)

This paper explores the ways in which working class mothers negotiate mothering and paid work. Drawing on interviews with 70 families with pre-school children, we examine how caring and working responsibilities are conceptualised and presented in mothers' narratives. Mothers showed a high degree of commitment to paid work and, in contrast to findings from an earlier study with middle class and professional mothers, did not feel that keeping their children at home with them was always the best option for the children. We suggest that working class mothers in the labour market remain at risk of being defined as inadequate mothers because of a middle class emphasis on intense maternal engagement with the child as a key aspect of "good" mothering. (Contains 3 tables and 1 note.)

In order to address some of the key underlying issues currently distorting dominant approaches to schooling it is necessary to acknowledge and engage with our broad intellectual and cultural responsibilities currently shunned by contemporary policy. Philosophy has a key role to play here, in terms of both deconstruction and recommendation. Drawing on the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray, this article argues for the need to situate our work within an historical context that requires judgement about matters of significance and purpose, not mere efficiency and effectiveness. It further argues for the provision of a convincing account of the relational nature of the self that will, in turn, provide the basis of a framework for organisational and communal analysis. The particular framework offered names the dangers of a new totalitarianism exemplified by high performance models of schooling currently preoccupying contemporary practice, advocacy and aspiration. In seeking to reclaim the centrality of human being and becoming in any future education policy it also proposes a person-centred alternative that transforms and transcends the hegemony of insistent instrumentalism in favour of an inclusive, creative community as a more fitting aspiration for education in a democratic society. (Contains 8 notes and 1 figure.)

This paper investigates aspects of policy implementation that relate to "Excellence in Cities", a UK government initiative. Local Education Authority (LEA) personnel and school teachers, responsible for implementing the Gifted and Talented (G&T) strand of that initiative, were interviewed. These co-ordinators were involved in the selection of school students to participate in an interventionist programme, the Urban Scholars programme at Brunel University. The Urban Scholars programme has nine participating LEAs in the London region. The LEA co-ordinator and one school co-ordinator from each authority were interviewed through a semi-structured interview schedule. They were asked the question: "What influenced your choice of school student for the Urban Scholars programme?" This generated data on their definitions of gifted and talented and the way the register of pupils, selected as gifted and talented, was socially constructed. The analysis of the responses to this question suggests that the social construction of the G&T register is an example of what had been described in policy sociology literature as performativity and fabrication. Further, we found that the LEA and school co-ordinators were struggling to align their educational philosophy with a selection process that offers particular children extra resources. The dissonance between policy and practice highlights the concept of meritocracy as problematic.

In 2003, we wrote a critical reply to Frank Coffield's reflections in this journal on the significance of the Performance and Innovation Unit's project on workforce development for the future direction of skills policy in England. As Coffield made clear in a rejoinder, underpinning our arguments are fundamental disagreements about what would be required to tackle the low skills equilibrium and develop the UK as a high skills society. Coffield criticised our project for being unrealistic and as offering no threat to the status quo. In this reply, we respond to these criticisms before subjecting Coffield's own policy recommendations to closer scrutiny. The danger with following his approach is that it not only results in academics setting their sights too low but is overly optimistic about what can be achieved by working with policy makers given current political and ideological constraints. (Contains 1 note.)

Using the system in the UK as a case study, this paper begins by examining the relationship between the rise of the "new managerialism" in the public services and the ideological framework that was provided for this by the convergence of key ideas emerging from the new right and new left. It looks then at the growth of the new educational bureaucracies to service this management culture and relates these to changes in the role of concepts of strategic management in the shift from the Cold War era to the present very different international configuration that has followed on from the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. It provides a critique of the pervasive, supervisory, performance management culture that has emerged in the public services by using organization theory to question the applicability of these processes to education. Most critiques of the new managerialism in education have engaged with it on sociological or political grounds without attempting to examine how these particular approaches are accounted for within organization theory. It focuses on the work of one influential theorist in the field, arguing that his work offers rich critical insights which are particularly applicable to the organizational forms of educational management. Finally it evaluates the influence of this management environment on the quality of education arguing that its obsessive focus on quantitative outcomes and the "measurable" has been a key factor in the narrowing of horizons and the impoverishment of educational policy discourse under the present Government and its immediate predecessors.

This article explores the previously quite marked absence from English policy debates on 14-19 education of issues that, in other developed countries, would be seen as key elements in the policy landscape. These are: the role of employers as providers of learning; the structure of employers' demand for skills, their recruitment and selection practices and the incentives this creates; the impact of labour market regulation on patterns of post-compulsory participation in vocational education and training. This article argues that these issues help explain our comparatively modest participation rates at 16-18 and that failure to confront such underlying structural factors makes progress on the kind of agenda raised by Tomlinson and the subsequent White Paper extremely problematic. It is suggested that recent developments may mark the start of a change in policy, with labour market issues gaining a new prominence. The article concentrates on the English institutional context, but many of the general points about the labour market and its interaction with young peoples' decisions about education and training hold good across the whole of the UK.

Partnerships are seen as vital to the functioning of many social institutions and the contribution that the private and voluntary not-for-profit sector organizations can make to the provision of statutory services is particularly valued. The Church of England Children's Society Genesis project worked for nearly 5 years in one urban, secondary school with a remit to promote inclusion. Despite much recorded good work, Genesis was not continued after its contract ended. The school had a series of head teachers and was in special measures for part of the period, but key problems centred around the extent of the project's contribution to the school's core business and the absence of a positive management of the multi-professional project by the school. The evaluation examines ways of proceeding which are of relevance to more complex projects. The paper also reviews the place of voluntary and non-profit making organizations in meeting current challenges to collaborative, multi-agency working and proposes a more robust, directive, and managerialist approach to make the most efficient and effective use of the resources and expertise of voluntary and statutory agencies (Inter-agency Czar and Stalinist environment!). Genesis has gone on to work more successfully in six further schools having absorbed the messages of the evaluation of this first enterprise.

Challenges progressive educators' view that skills, education, and learning are a universal solution to array of economic and social problems in the UK. Argues that those calling for progressive educational reform must acknowledge the reality of the contemporary class-divided workplace and the institutional context of UK capitalism. (Contains 134 references.) (Authors/PKP)

Draws on research on sixth-form (general education)colleges to examine the first of four goals established UK government Green Paper proposal to reform the supply side of 14-19 education: Meeting needs and improving choice. Discusses several barriers to the reform of educational institutions differentiated by class. Draws implications for policy implementation. (Contains 6 tables and 35 references.) (PKP)

Examines concept of "lifelong learning" and analyzes its role and its viability within the current higher education system in the U.K. Discusses attitudes toward adult students. Identifies shortcomings in efforts to attract and motivate mature learners and discusses ways in which to improve such efforts. (Contains 48 references.) (KSB)

Argues that a humanist discourse prevalent in teacher relations with students, colleagues, and advisor/inspectors has been challenged by a "performativity" discourse that, among other things, distances teachers from students and creates a dependency culture in opposition to previous mutual and intimate relations. Concludes that the change in relations is an indicator of fundamental change to social relations. (50 references) (Author/PKP)

UK educational administration scholars have undertaken a survey to redefine their field of knowledge. This is an exercise in "turf talk." The lack of regard accorded practitioners' situational and practical knowledge and headteacher associations' invisibility places the academy in an adversarial rather than a knowledge-sharing position. (Contains 44 references.) (MLH)

A correction to the article on restrictive-expansive approaches to education policy in Great Britain is presented.

Provides an overview of the relationship between educational policy and social class in Great Britain. Formulation of educational policy in the nineteenth century; Variables causing societal fragmentation of educational policy; Impact of social class segmentation on the overall quality of education.